Corrugated cardboard containers are commonly used for storing and shipping consumer durable and non-durable goods from manufacturer to retailer. During storage and shipping, such containers are stacked upon each other on pallets or in unit loads. Stacks are at least the height of trucks or rail cars, and may reach 30 feet or so in warehouses. Therefore, shipping containers not only protect their contents from dust and weather, but also they typically provide column strength to protect their contents from the weight of other containers stacked above them.
The corrugated/laminated material of shipping containers provides rigidity and column strength while being light in weight and low in cost. Typically, fiat container blanks are die cut from large sheets of corrugated cardboard, scored for folding, and formed into rectangular containers with flaps, using glue or staples to secure walls of the container at fight angles to each other. These containers are commonly called Regular Slotted Containers.
Historically, further reducing the weight of corrugated cardboard containers has not been important because they are already light weight. However, environmental pressures for source reduction, reduced packaging, and material recycling, have caused corrugated cardboard containers to be reexamined. One environmentally favorable approach has been to reuse each container several times. Such containers are commonly called Reshipper Containers. Reshipper Containers are robustly constructed to absorb the abuses of loading, unloading, and multiple shipping and storage situations.
More recently, containers have been made with large die-cut openings. Instead of reuse, these containers are intended for a single use, but they have less material than Regular Slotted Containers. Some such containers are constructed from multiple, odd-shaped corrugated pieces for specialized applications, such as heavy appliance shipping. They may have wooden supports or metal frames to increase structural rigidity. The large open sides may be wrapped with plastic film to protect container contents from dust and weather. The specialized nature of such containers, combined with their hand assembly and high scrap cost from die cutting corrugated shapes, does not provide a low cost alternative for shipping most consumer goods, however.
Other die-cut, single-use containers are essentially Regular Slotted Containers with portions of side panels removed by further die-cutting. Any material that is die-cut from a carton blank becomes scrap. Although such scrap may be recycled, handling and recycling scrap have significant costs associated with them. What is needed is a minimal material container which is formed without the generation of scrap.